The Change Strategist: What the Janitor Knows That Leadership Doesn’t with Karli Grove

I'm rocking up to the airport and I'm like, yeah, I'm here to check in for my flight.

My grandma had upgraded me to business class and I'm, I'm pumped.

And I get there and he's like, oh, where are you going?

I said, I'm going to New Zealand.

He says, where in New Zealand?

I said, I'm going to Auckland.

He goes, no, you're not.

Excuse me, sir.

What?

He goes, there is a cyclone that just hit and it's flooded the airport, so we've sent all our staff home.

You can still get on your connecting flight to Fiji, but then we can't help you.

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Let's do it.

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Hello.

Welcome to episode 367 of the Business Development Podcast.

Today it is my absolute pleasure to welcome to the show Carli Grove.

Carly is the founder of Canton C Consulting, an organizational change strategist, speaker and workshop facilitator who helps leaders see the big picture behind their systems.

With a background that spans global experience and human centered leadership, Carly brings a fresh empathetic lens to the often chaotic world of change.

Her signature approach, the Step Zero Framework, challenges the notion that transformation starts with action.

Instead, she helps organizations pause map their full ecosystem and uncover the hidden patterns and feedback loops driving behavior beneath the surface.

Known for her clarity, warmth and perspective driven process, Carly shows that real change doesn't have to be disruptive.

It can be deeply human.

Through her powerful water cycle framework, she guides leaders to move from reactivity to intention, from firefighting to flow.

For anyone ready to stop patching symptoms and start transforming systems.

Carly Grove isn't just here to talk about change.

She's here to change the way you see it.

Carly, what an honor and a privilege to have you on the show today.

Oh my God, I am speechless.

Thank you.

Me too.

Man, I don't think my mouth is working properly today.

That is.

Let me just bottle that up for a minute.

Holy that was a beautiful introduction.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's so funny.

I mess them up all the time.

And my listeners know this, but they never hear it.

I'm not afraid to say I like mushmouth the bejesus out of that, but you'll never know because it's fixed.

You'll never know.

You'll never know.

Got behind the closed doors.

It's a whole other ecosystem.

Oh, goodness.

Goodness, Carly, we haven't known each other a long time at this point.

I want to say, like two or three months since we've kind of met each other.

We actually met through the Catalyst Club.

You are one of the founding members of Catalyst Club, so honor and a privilege.

Thanks for trusting in me and joining our community.

And you entered with a bang.

Oh, did I ever.

Oh, that was.

I still think.

I still think you, to date, at least for now, have the record of the most engagement for any post inside Catalyst Club at this point in time.

Simultaneously an honor and crazy.

Crazy.

That's entrepreneurship, though, isn't it?

Yeah.

And it's for listeners.

It was essentially a very vulnerable post.

Yes.

Which Kelly does an excellent job of making the community so welcoming for context.

I had joined.

I was joined the catalyst club for 12 hours before I entered our.

Was it Coffee with the rock stars?

Coffee with rock stars.

Yeah.

I wasn't even in the group for 12 hours.

And I'm in that call, and I am crying on this call, being like, you guys, it is dark.

Dark.

Yeah.

It is dark in the world of entrepreneurship.

My God.

And then, yeah, I made a post and I messaged you and I said, can I make a post like this?

And you're like, not only can you make it, but please, like, I encourage it.

So I made this very vulnerable post, and I had the most supportive comments to date.

I want to say we had something like 50 comments.

I don't know how many phone calls you got, but probably a couple.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A couple coffee meetings afterwards.

It was amazing.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

You are.

You are a loved member of our community, Carly.

So thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us and for being so vulnerable, for being willing to do that.

Right.

And, you know, just for the people who may not be part of Catalyst Club, what makes Catalyst Club so powerful is being able to show up authentically, is being able to show the hard.

The hard things, right?

Because let's get real, like, we're all human.

We're human.

First, business people, second.

Life is happening to each and every one of us all the time.

And if we deny that, we're essentially just denying everything.

Because at the end of the day, you can't, you can't work well if you don't feel well.

Yeah, it's been a roller coaster of emotions, and I love that I've had Catalyst Club to come in, express those.

And one of the things, too, I've said this to my best friend earlier this particular month, it's probably at the time of recording, been the darkest month of my life.

And I joked, my friends, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm back to crying in public.

Oh, okay, this is fun.

This is fun.

But I was talking to my best friend afterwards and I said, you know what?

I get a lot of kudos from people about the vulnerability that I express.

And the thing is, I don't have any issues literally crying for help.

I have no issues showing the depth of my vulnerability.

Yeah.

What I do have an issue with, though, is when people reciprocate with the surface level of their support, and sometimes, depending who you ask, you get surface level support.

But I was blown away with the depths of support that I received from the Catalyst Club and the members, because,.

Holy, I think so many of them see themselves in you.

I think, you know, when I talk with, like, some of our members, I'm not going to name any of them because, you know, we do keep their privacy.

But there are some senior members of our community who know you very well, who know you outside of the club as well, and they just want to see you win.

They see you in themselves.

They remember the start of their journey and how vulnerable and hard and like an uphill battle it felt for them.

And so, yeah, they go out of their way ultimately to, to help you.

And I think that's the power of having a bunch of leaders in a room, because it doesn't matter where you are on that journey, you've experienced likely every single challenge that everyone else has.

Like, we like to think that, like, as business owners, as leaders, as podcasters, whatever we do, that our journey is super unique to us.

But I've interviewed well over 150 people, and I can say that the same challenges seem to be coming up over and over again.

Which is so funny that you say that too, to the change lady, because that is the exact same thing that I see with change all the time.

People go, oh, there's so many changes.

There's so we have to make all these changes.

And I go, no, you're solving the same root issue.

They just have 20,000 different flavors, but it's the same core, whatever, three, four, five things.

You're just overwhelmed with the flavors that they take on.

That's right.

Not actually all that fancy.

Like, it's the same thing.

Yeah, yeah.

And I like to think about it like ice cream.

Right.

You can have different types of ice cream, they all taste different, but if you get to the base of it, ice cream is just frozen milk.

For.

The most part anyway.

Point is that.

Yeah.

Like, when you really dissect most challenges, whether it be in business, entrepreneurship, business development, nine times out of 10, it's like the same five challenges coming up over and over and over again.

If you can learn how to get, how to handle those, it doesn't matter what flavor they come in.

And a lot of times all it takes to solve the issue is to put the human back into the equation.

The moment that people take humans out of the equation when it comes to change and they make it just a black and white issue, it goes.

Well, it's.

It's not.

You need to make it human.

It's not.

That shouldn't be that complicated.

Yes, yes.

Well, one of my questions to you is, like, obviously a lot of people fear change, right?

When I worked in organizations, making change happen, especially at scale, especially with established teams, I know it was always a problem.

And you talk with anybody in, like, the organizational development space, and they'll tell you that getting true change in an organization, it's very, very challenging.

Has that been your experience as well?

More often than not, yeah.

Believe it or not, no surprise.

There's probably similar core elements that are patterned across all of those, though.

You take a step back and you go, okay, well, what did it look like when they started the change?

Was the staff blindsided by this?

Because if they're blindsided by this change, obviously they're going to have a lot of resistance to this big change.

Is it a couple people at the top trying to push things down?

If so, then obviously there's going to be some resistance.

If it's implementing a new change that someone on the staff is going, hey, this actually isn't going to work.

And why aren't you listening to me?

Actually, there's going to be resistance.

So it's always fascinating because there's always more below the surface of where this resistance is coming from.

But because people look at it from a black and white KPI system they overlooked, that's actually probably not that difficult to implement this change.

Maybe just having a bit more vulnerability, whatever vulnerability looks like in the situation, talking to People bringing people into the equation.

Crazy.

What a crazy concept to bring people into the equation.

Right.

But top down leadership has been around for so long.

Right.

If I look at like any of the organizations that I worked at growing up, you'd have a manager or you would have the president come in and say, we're gonna be doing this, figure out how to do it.

There wasn't a lot of like, how do you feel about that?

Or does this work for you?

Or it, you know, I mean, maybe we're just products of our generations a little bit.

But like, I very much remember in the early 2000s, everything was just dictated for the most part.

Like, they weren't looking who ran it.

Yeah, they weren't looking for things in the early 2000s.

The people that ran it, the only lifestyle that they knew was top down management.

You work your way up, you live, work in a company for 20, 30 years, working up the ladder.

That's how you get your seniority, respect.

There was no other way.

Yeah, yeah.

It blows my mind.

I had my mind very much opened by Liz Ryan.

But Liz Ryan wrote an exceptional book, Reinvention, Roadmap.

And what she was talking about was the death of that 30 year career, about how like we were as a generation.

Our parents, for instance, were promised 30 years in a gold watch, let's call it.

Yeah.

And that same promise was just ripped away for the next generation.

But nobody told them.

Nobody told them they knew.

And so, and so I look even at like, at like me growing up and my dad and my mom literally being like, get a good job and keep your nose clean and work hard and in 30 years you'll be able to get whatever you want or you'll be able to get, you'll be able to retire.

Right.

Like, and so even like our generation as millennials was raised that way and it was total bullshit.

Yeah.

Well, it's exponential growth.

The thing with change is it happens exponentially.

When we're in grade nine, we're taught how to write a resume and a cover letter.

And I remember being in grade nine and they go, okay, pick a job.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

And I go, I don't know.

And they go, just pick anything.

And that alone was a really hard task for me to just pick something.

Sure.

But then if you think about that, the job that even if I did pick a job at grade nine, what exists now didn't exist then.

So maybe this realm of organizational change didn't exist when I was in grade nine.

Sure.

Influencers were not a thing when I.

Was in grade nine.

Yep.

Like, it's completely different.

And even now, imagine telling a grade nine kid, okay, write a cover letter to a university you want to attend to in three years and a degree you're going to get in seven years.

The degree they're going to get in seven years might not even exist right now at the time they're writing the letter.

Change is happening so exponentially.

Yeah, yeah.

And you know, obviously nobody was factoring in AI, Right.

But even when, even when I started this Show Back in 2023, I hadn't really played with AI at all.

Right.

Like, aside from like, I guess, filtering my inbox.

See, I got told later there were a bunch of AI things that I didn't know were AI, like inbox email filters and things.

Had no idea I was learned later.

But the thing is.

Okay, so I'm glad you say AI.

Can I catch you on that one for a minute?

Absolutely, yeah.

This is.

I have little experience in the tech industry, so maybe this is completely incorrect and someone might in the comments correct me.

But when people say AI right now, I think they're also completely misusing it when they actually mean algorithms.

Algorithms have been along for a long time.

There have been algorithms in existence for years.

For decades.

But AI, in the term of language learning.

Yes.

Yeah.

You can filter your emails.

You've been able to filter your emails for years.

But to create an email, that's AI.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

Yeah.

Like, I guess what we're talking about is generative AI.

Okay.

Yeah.

So.

So I think maybe that would be the space.

But once again, I'm also not tech.

I'm.

When it comes to tech, I bring in experts.

I am not that person.

Yeah, yeah.

But, yeah, I've interviewed quite a few different experts on it who, who basically said to me, like, Kelly, like AI, as you're thinking about it, maybe that isn't that like large language model or like the ability to filter things has actually been around pretty much forever.

I didn't really understand it in that way.

Still don't.

Still not sure that I have it fully understood now.

But basically we're saying, like we've been filtering emails and stuff with AI for years, but what you're thinking about is generative AI.

Yeah.

Like large language models with reinforced learning, for instance, who are learning from their mistakes.

That's very new to now.

That's a new level of intelligence.

Yes, yes.

But even then, like that level, like Chad GPT, I think I tried it for the first time a full year into the BDP, I want to say it was like 2024 or nearly 2024 the first time I even tried chat GPT.

So I was like, really new.

And I remember, like blowing my mind then Carly and then realizing later on that technology is advancing.

At the time, it was saying about double every six months.

It was doubling in power about every six months.

And I remember sitting at the kitchen table with Shelby and just thinking about our boys and thinking about the future and just trying to figure out, okay, well, if it's doubling every six months, that means that by 2028, it's going to be a thousand times more powerful than it was in 2023.

What does that even mean?

Right?

And 2028 is not that far away.

Like, it's really not.

It's 2026 and people are hearing this show like, we're talking less than two years away, people.

Yeah, I was at a conference last year and one of the takeaways that I got from it was this one guy was talking about AI and the statement that he said, he's like, you guys, we are in the dial up stage of AI.

Yeah.

Remember when dial up Internet came out, we had no idea what it could have become.

No one could have predicted its evolution.

We are the dial up stage of AI.

It's like, oh, my God, I love.

That because I actually use the iPhone.

When I talk about AI Stage we're at.

Okay, because think about it.

When.

When Steve Jobs released the iPhone, all we knew at that time was the iPod.

Right?

MP3 players, MP3 players, an iPod touch.

Right?

And I remember watching that video that dates me a little bit.

But I remember watching that video back in 2007 when they were talking, probably in 2006 even, and they were talking about it, and it was their, like, big launch release.

And he's like, it's an ipod.

It's a phone.

It's an ipod.

It's a phone.

I remember being like, oh, my gosh, it's an ipod in a phone.

Having no clue what a smartphone would become.

But I'm like, yes, can you believe what a smartphone has become?

Right?

And I even think of, there's this one YouTube video that I think of in.

This guy is a math magician.

And this video was taken in the early 2000s.

And if you don't know that, then you're completely thrown off by this video.

Because what he does is he says to the audience, he's about to do a math trick, but you're gonna think he's a magician.

And he asked the audience, does anyone here have a calculator?

And listening to it now, you're like, ha, ha, what a funny joke.

And you're like, oh, shit.

No, no.

Only four people in the audience actually raised their hand because you didn't have calculators in your pocket.

No, no.

And I love that.

I love that because I remember being in high school and my teacher being adamant that we would not have calculators in our pocket.

You need to learn how to do math without a calculator because you will.

Your pocket.

It's like, my gosh, if I could just show him my super pocket, my super computer AI that knows everything that lives in my pocket.

A couple of years ago, I had one of those just little Google Home, Google Nest things.

Yeah, you don't even need it in your pocket.

Hey, Google, what's four times four?

Yeah.

Sorry to everyone with a Google.

Oh, goodness.

But, and hold on.

Let's talk about how amazing that was, right?

Let's talk about Alexa and Google Home for a second.

They are absolutely amazing.

The first time I had one at home, I was like, this blows my mind.

I can talk to it and it'll, like, answer basic questions.

My kids can talk to it and ask it questions about, like, the dinosaurs, and it'll.

It'll give.

But now it's so dumb.

Like, compared to ChatGPT, it is so dumb.

I.

You know, I mean, the boys will be playing with Alexa.

This thing's an idiot.

It can't answer any of my questions.

And ChatGPT can answer them, and it can answer them and sound like a person.

And like I said, we're what, two years in, maybe three years going on, three years into large language model CHAT GPT technology and that publicly, and it's almost.

Yeah, publicly and it's almost indistinguishable.

I was listening to Joe Rogan's AI Experience.

Have you listened to that yet?

No.

Joe Rogan created a version of his show called the Joe Rogan AI Experience, and he interviews people that aren't even around anymore or that, like, aren't.

Aren't actually on his show.

Like, he does, like, the Rock.

He does Donald Trump, he does Steve Jobs, and the whole thing, Carly, is done in AI.

His voice is AI.

Their voices are AI.

And it's off.

But my gosh, we're about one year away from it being indistinguishable from his actual show.

That it's definitely got a lot of.

Definitely got a lot of implications.

Yeah.

It makes me Wonder, right is the future of entertainment, of learning, of education completely AI like if you don't need the person to actually speak the thing, if you can type it out or have a large language model, create the educational content and then have that same model use like the Joe Rogan AI experience and SPE and teach that lesson right in a, in a voice that's just indistinguishable from any other human.

That might be the end of human teachers in theory.

But then humans also have this incredible way of holding onto nostalgia and bringing things back.

They we are very good at operating in pendulums.

As my microphone tips down in a pendulum motion.

We are very good at operating in pendulums where we go from one extreme to the next.

And I use like generations of families.

For example.

One generation grows up in a hoarding household.

The next generation, their kids are minimalists.

Yes.

And then the.

You grew up in a minimalist household and you grew up in a maximalist household.

My house will be maximal.

Like we operate as humans in pendulums.

Yeah.

I don't know that it's going to be as devastating as we think because I think I have optimism at least that there's going to be some sort of pendulum swaying back to massive humanity right now.

We're massive technology.

I think we're going to have another influx of massive humanity.

See, I have a slightly different view than you, but it's not, it's not off.

But I think what's going to happen is that almost all education is going to go to AIs and it will be considered a lesser form of education.

Even though it might not be.

It might actually be more accurate even than a person.

The human experience is going to become a premium thing.

And so like for instance, I think the fact that like you, you are very much on that like keynote speaking path.

You host your own events.

You won't be long until.

Sure.

Till you're on a TED stage somewhere in the world.

I think that will be the true value of humanity moving forward.

We will put so much more value on in person events, on real, authentic connection.

Because the AI connection will be cheap.

It'll become the like cheap thing that everyone.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you want the authentic real thing, you will be.

You'll pay a premium for it.

I think genuine, like seeing people in person will skyrocket in value.

Skyrocket.

I think so too because they're also as science is evolving.

And it's funny that you and I are talking about science and AI and technology because we are probably the least qualified people to talk about all of these topics.

But you can see it, you can see it coming.

And you know, in all fairness too, you speak with a lot of leaders, I speak with a lot of leaders and I think about these things and it doesn't take long to put together that I think once, once AI becomes the more standard way of like getting information, the human experience will become more valuable because that is the finite resource, not the unlimited AI resource.

And science is ever evolving to put more information on the power of in person energy.

We know that it exists and I don't know all the proper terms, but we have heart electric signal radiuses around literally the electrical currents that our heart produces.

We know that there's in person elements that cannot be duplicated online.

We can get little tastes of it, but we know that in person is second to none in terms of the experience because of how science is going to evolve and be able to explain it to us better in two years.

Sure.

But that's going to be a definitely an element too of okay, you can go to AI for the Quick Knowledge Education foundation stuff, but then you connect, which is also one of the things that I'm really wanting to do with this company is to deepen the way we connect.

And I think a lot of big part about that is going to be in person connection, shifting our perspectives, seeing how we change things and just looking at humanity on that slightly vulnerable, whatever that looks like to you, level of how do we connect as humans?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's, it's interesting because you're gen. Would I be, would I be fair to assume that you're Gen Z?

I am on the cusp.

I am what you call a zillennial.

A zillennial.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

So millennials are really weird.

If I look at like my people, we grew up literally on both sides.

Like both sides.

We had no technology for the most part and then we had all the technology.

So I think like for me I was born in 88, so I think like I was 10, 11 when we got dial up Internet.

So I still remember that horrible noise.

I still remember my mom yelling at me to get off the friggin Internet so she could use the phone.

Yeah, different time, right?

But so I've seen all of it.

I remember having no Internet, having a home phone, literally like having to remember your friends phone numbers, having them written down, having a literal like phone number board, memorize them.

I was right on, I think I, I wasn't on the inter.

On either side, but I saw the tail end of it.

So I, I have distinct memories of dial up.

I remember having to sit on a computer in an office to access Facebook because the only way you could access Facebook was from a browser.

Yeah.

Like I started junior high, we didn't have cell phones.

Like, it wasn't, we didn't, no one had cell phones as a kid until you were grade nine or grade ten.

Yes.

When I was in high school, the touch phones came out, the iPhones came out.

But even then we had social media, but we were not glued to it.

We had, wasn't really a thing.

It didn't dictate our lives.

University, even going throughout university, we had social media.

But I remember I could get up, make breakfast, get out the door in 30 minutes and then get on a train ride for 30 minutes.

Yeah.

And then sit in class for an hour and a half and still not check social media.

Yeah.

Whoa, that's impressive.

It wasn't a thing.

I'm like so guilty.

Like I get up in the morning, it's like, okay, well what happened on LinkedIn last night?

Yeah.

But no, I have distinct memories of I could go the entire morning without checking it.

You just didn't need to.

No.

It's hard, it's hard to believe.

It really is hard to believe how far fast things change.

Right.

And I think maybe the scarier part, Carly, right now is that as much as things have changed in the last, let's call it 10 years for us, like the next 10 years I think are going to change even faster than ever before with that advent of AI, with it being able to reinforce learning and learn so much quicker.

You know, the thing able to speak to people worldwide in social media.

Well, even, even if you look at like the podcast or Catalyst Club, right.

Like we have members from around the world and it's like, in what time could that have been possible?

To be able to sit down for coffee with people from around the world in real time, no latency, See their faces, have a full on conversation, learn something, laugh together from your office.

I can send a PDF from my computer to your computer also instantaneously.

How do you read it?

Like we can send mail through video calls.

It's insane.

I know, I know.

And like, so as a, you know, I have five boys.

Two of them are very, very young, but the other three, they're growing up pretty rapidly and I guess I like, I worry about not being able to teach them the right things.

Right.

I think for me it's like I can teach them lessons, but I think at the rate of change, like, if you consider even, like, how people lived 200 years ago or a hundred years ago, you probably did what your parents did.

That was it.

Because that was the lesson.

And, you know, let's assume they were farmers.

The tools hadn't changed in a thousand years.

Right.

So, like, very minuscule.

Yeah.

Like, if you taught them.

If you taught them how to, you know, how to.

How to cut corn or whatever the tools they use to cut corn, you'd be like, yeah, I'm gonna teach you how to swing this thing.

And you're gonna teach your kid that.

Because that's the.

Nothing's changing.

And now the ways that we do things doesn't just change over 10 years.

It can change in one year and see six months.

Right.

Like, yeah.

I think the greatest skill we can embrace today is change.

Absolutely.

Like, there is no other skill.

There is no other skill, really.

And I think it's what people find so scary about change is the unknown.

They're trying to control too much.

But the thing with change is, it's.

What is the part that we're trying to hold on to?

And is there a way we can kind of navigate this change without having to give up the thing that we're holding onto?

Can we just adapt it a little bit differently?

Just because this change works for my neighbor doesn't mean it's gonna work for me.

But maybe I can take some inspiration and go, oh, okay, I'm gonna take these little elements and I'll.

I'll adopt them in a way that works for me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, man.

We've already had, like, half a podcast before we even got into it, Carly.

Holy cow.

Before we get into that, because I wanna get into change management.

I wanna get into, how do we do this better?

How do we change our mindset around it?

Because powerhouse in that.

But before we do that, who is Carly Grove?

How in the world did you end up on this path that has led you to become such a, you know, a smart change manager?

Oh, well, like every other entrepreneur, it seems there is no linear path.

It.

Oh, man.

Where do you want me to.

How far back do we want to go?

High school?

University?

Sure.

Take me back.

Take me back to high school.

Did you know back in high school that you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Was it modeled to you?

I didn't even know.

Okay.

Funny you should even ask that.

When I was in high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do as an adult.

The only realm of a career that I even had in my sphere was to be a teacher.

And that is because that is the only profession that I really saw modeled to me of what it looked like to actually execute.

Okay.

And I liked school.

I really liked school.

I straight A student in Alberta.

It's called the Dash 1 curriculum.

I was in all the Dash 1 classes.

I like, I have a distinct memory.

I loved math.

In high school, I loved math.

And I remember in grade 10, I got 93% on my final and I was pissed.

Grade 11, I got 95% on my grade 11 final.

I was pissed.

Oh, no.

Grade 12, I had two math classes.

One was the government, grade 12.

And then the other one was calculus.

I think my grade 12 high school diploma.

I got 94% and I was pissed.

I wanted a hundred.

So my final calculus class was the final day of high school.

The last class of the day, the last day in this high school in general.

And we had two exams.

We had a written test and a multiple choice test.

So the day before, we had written the written test and I got two marks wrong.

And I was like, oh, no.

And the guy that I was neck and neck with in terms of the class standings, I think he had gotten three questions wrong or maybe two questions.

Regardless of how it went, this multiple choice, I needed to get 100% to know that I could beat this guy, that I was going to be higher than him in standings.

Yeah.

And because it was multiple choice, the teacher was able to put the laminate over top and tell me how I got.

And I got 100%.

Last day of high school on my math test.

Finally got it.

Yeah.

But no, I had no idea what I wanted to be in high school.

I didn't know what the options were.

I literally, I just kind of followed what some of my peers were doing.

They applied to the University of Alberta, so I applied to the University of Alberta.

They applied into the faculty of science.

So I'll apply into the faculty of science.

I remember one day peeking over their shoulders of like, okay, what courses did they enroll in?

Okay, those are courses I should enroll in.

I had no idea, no idea what anything could look like.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

I. I think it's unreasonable to ask high school students to make a choice on what they are going to do for the rest of their lives.

I don't know why in the world we adopted that as like an okay thing.

But even if I look at like my adult life, I don't think I should have been making those decisions until I was like 25 years old.

Well, that's the thing.

Like teenagers.

I mean, I don't have kids, but it hasn't been that long since I've been a teenager, admittedly, in the grand scheme of things.

And you're supposed to be figuring stuff out as a teenager.

Teenagers are going through all sorts of scary changes that they do not know how to understand.

So to be able to expect them to make a lifetime decision when they are just figuring themselves out, like, just figuring out the biology of things, that's nuts.

Yeah.

And then I also have been hearing from people about, did I hear this from someone who.

Did I?

Regardless, there's a saying out there that your twenties is your trialhood of adulthood.

Sure.

Yep.

And I have been embracing that to the fullest.

I'm like, yeah, let's go.

Well, it gives you enough time.

You can basically royally screw up in your 20s and still be completely okay.

I think that's the benefit of your 20s.

Right.

Like, at the end of the day, you can still change your whole life without pretty much any consequence.

By the time you're like mid-30s, early-40s, you got a lot less time to screw it up.

You still can if you want to, but hopefully you got more of an idea.

Your 20s, there's a time that go and experiment with a couple of different career paths.

Go in.

Oh, my.

I'm a huge advocate for travel.

Like, go travel, Go figure some stuff out.

At the very least, you'll figure out what you don't want to do, and you'll have a great time in the process.

And you'll learn things.

You'll learn about others, yourself, the world.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

But I also really like school, so I went into university.

But even that, I went into.

I went into the faculty of science, as you're supposed or as I blindly followed.

Yeah.

And I me being on this podcast with you today, I can trace back to failing a chemistry quiz in my first month of university.

We're never rewarded for failures.

No, in the real world.

But, like, the failures are what kind of catapult all these things and these massive changes.

I failed a chemistry quiz.

I remember very distinctly almost where I was sitting.

And in a moment, I had my first life epiphany, where I went, oh, my God, I've never failed anything in my life.

I need to get out of science and into business.

I wouldn't have had that revelation if I hadn't failed the chem quiz, if I would've went straight into business.

Like, you need those failures to kind of catapult those changes, but that's what prompted it.

And I went, holy shit.

So then I thankfully, at the time, business was a one plus three program.

So you had to spend your first year in a different faculty anyways and get your prerequisites and then apply into business for your second year.

So I thankfully didn't lose out on any time.

But still I thought that I wanted science.

Failed a chemistry quiz.

Oh, nope, we're going to detour into business.

And then when I got into business, even then I went, I still don't know what I want my life to look like.

So I'm just going to pick the most generic major that I can.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I ended up picking at the time also.

The school's changed a lot since then.

It was called Strategic Management and Organization.

So smo.

SMO classes.

And a way that I explained it is it's a fancy degree in people skills, but if you took a very specific stream of SMO courses, you got an HR degree.

I think another specific stream maybe gave you an entrepreneur degree.

I think there was a specific third stream, but I was the overarching of all of them.

Yeah.

I went in with the most generic degree that I could because I'm like, I don't want to be niched into accounting or finance or marketing or.

Let me figure it out.

Yeah.

Well, I think.

I think a lot of people go into business because they don't know what they want to do.

And I would actually argue that's a great idea.

That's what you should do.

Because it can open doors at pretty much every organization, especially depending really any of those things that you said, like if you wanted to major in accounting or, or HR or leadership development or organization and structure, all of those things are pretty much needed everywhere at any business ever.

So I don't know.

I think if I was making recommendations to my kids who were like, I don't know what I want to do, I'd be like, take business.

You can figure it out later.

Yeah.

And sometimes the thing if.

Especially when I first finished the degree and people are going, what are you going to do with this degree?

I go, I have no idea.

I'm going to frame it and put it on my wall.

Yeah.

Sometimes I go, can I tell you some of the courses that I took?

Maybe that'll help explain.

Explain.

Because it.

It was a very good degree.

Funnily enough, it's a solid foundation for this business I'm doing now because it has a lot of really good foundation pieces around people skills.

Yeah.

There Were a negotiations class, communications class, organizational change class, strategy and innovation class, Organizational behavior culture and how it influences human resources ethics.

Like, you actually took a lot of really solid business foundation things.

But at the time, when you finish university, you're applying for a specific job title and there's no job title that connects to those other than, I guess, entrepreneurs.

That's the catch.

All.

There you go.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Amazing.

So you went to university, you got your degree, and then you did some pretty awesome world traveling.

Talk to me about the travel.

There was a little chapter in between there first.

Okay.

Yeah.

So the travel did not come right away.

I kind of.

When I was in university, I met all these incredible people from all over the world.

I come from small town Alberta.

Like small town Alberta.

My grade nine class was nine kids.

Wow.

Yeah.

My high school graduation class was 41 kids.

Wow.

And it was five towns came together to create a class of 41 kids.

So we're talking small town.

My parents grew up there, Grandparents of all sides of my family.

I am three, four generations in there.

Yeah.

Growing up.

But I went to university, I met all these incredible people from all over the world.

And I was like, man, this is piquing my interest.

I don't like the narrowness.

Like, no, I don't want to say narrowness.

I don't like the limited perspective that I had.

Sure.

As a small town, I love the small town values.

Very fortunate to have grown up with those foundational values, but not somewhere that I want to stay.

And so I for a little bit thought about doing kind of a semester abroad, but I did not know how to go about doing that.

So I didn't.

Okay.

But so I kind of started getting a taste for it and I had told myself the five year plan of like, okay, in five years we'll hop the pond.

Five years, we'll hop the pond.

No idea what that'll look like.

Five years, we'll hop the pond.

So I actually ended up out of university, moving back to my small town and got a job at my local insurance company, Insurance brokerage.

Okay.

Because at the time I had actually started having this business idea percolate in the back of my mind.

There were a couple of things that I had experienced and I went, ooh, actually this could be really interesting to do a business.

But no one's going to take me seriously as a consultant fresh out of university.

I need to get some life experience first.

Yeah.

So I went back home and I thought, okay, well, business needs insurance and commercial insurance.

Everyone hates insurance.

So it would be a very valuable asset to be able to have behind the scenes knowledge of this thing that people hate.

Business.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I went into insurance and I did that for three years.

And I actually really loved it.

I loved working with the people.

I liked the systems, I liked my coworkers.

It was just management started to change, and that's kind of when we.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So I moved back home.

I started this insurance job.

And when I was moving back home, I was on the pursuit of gaining life experience.

So I wore all sorts of hats.

I was a virtual assistant for a business coach.

I worked with her for about four years.

I was also my small town.

The local hockey arena a number of years back turned into a field house.

And so I ran the field house.

I got their website up and running.

I got memberships automated.

I was managing events, I got their branding, all that, all sorts of stuff for the field house, I did that.

I was also very heavily involved in the local Scottish club.

Yes.

I was there, media manager.

I was their treasurer.

I was part of the band.

So I was like everything I could to just gain all this life experience.

Cause I'm also from a small town.

It was really easy just to say, hey, guys that have known me since I was a baby, I want to partake.

And they're like, yeah, we want.

Come on in.

So it's very easy to gain life experience.

Amazing.

Amazing.

Okay.

And then you went to New Zealand.

Yeah.

Did you want to talk about the Scottish Club first?

I know that you're super curious.

I do want to know.

I'm a Kennedy.

Of course I want to talk about the Scottish club.

Yeah.

Why am I not an honorary member yet?

And get you connected.

Yes.

What is a Scottish club?

It is a group of people in my small town that just.

They kind of celebrate the Scottish values.

And it started off with a couple, actually just a man and a woman, that they started hosting Robbie Burns events in January.

So they would host these Robbie Burns dinner events.

For those that don't know Robbie Burns in the.

In January is.

Robbie Burns was a poet and I think the 1700s.

And so a lot of Scottish communities around the time of end of January, when Robbie Burns's birthday is, they do formal dinners and dances and they call it a Robbie Burns event.

And it's just an excuse to kind of get together formally.

Put on your nice Scottish attire and get together.

So the Scottish Club started off as a couple, just hosting some Scottish or hosting some Robbie Burns events.

And then it evolved into a couple other people coming together.

And then they hosted a summer event called Gathering of the Clans Highland Festival.

And then they started hosting Tartan Day, which is in celebration of the official Canadian acknowledgment of Tartan Day.

Yeah.

So I came into the picture at one of their.

Actually, I think it was their first gathering of the Clans Highland Festival.

Yeah.

I had just started seeing a guy whose family was very heavily involved in the Scottish club.

And it started off with his dad had a camera and gave him the camera.

Yeah.

And I looked at him and I said, you are not taking pictures.

Give me the camera.

So I'm taking pictures of the event, and next thing I know, I'm taking pictures at all of the events.

I'm their media manager.

I'm looking after their.

Their website, their poster designs, their social media, their branding.

I created their logo from paint and Microsoft Word is how I made the logo.

Wow.

I was handling the outreach for, like, the community press, the local newspaper.

I was doing all sorts of, like, anything and everything to do with media management.

Yeah.

I.

Because I'm gaining life experience.

Right.

That's the chapter of life that I'm in.

And I'm like, give it to me.

That's right.

And then the treasurer was leaving, and the treasurer is like, hey, we need someone else to step in.

And I go, I like numbers.

I like math.

I like Excel.

I'll come be your treasurer.

So now I'm the treasurer.

And then the Scottish club was also starting the band.

And because I just started dating this guy, and I was like, oh, the family's in the band.

Kay, I'll join the band.

Let's go.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

Okay, cool.

Actually, fun take on the Scottish stuff.

We were going through some boxes of my dad's stuff the other day, and we came across the Kennedy tartan and Scottish tie.

And it literally says Clan Kennedy on his tie.

And fun.

You know how, like, the Scottish clans, they all have, like, images.

Ours is apparently a dolphin.

And the saying.

The saying translates from French to English.

I don't understand why it's a French saying.

I don't know.

I don't know the whole history of Scotland, but basically the saying is consistent.

Consider the end.

And I was like, oh, that's cryptic.

Kennedies are having.

They've.

They've experienced some stuff.

They're.

Yes.

I think that's what.

That's what that says to me.

They've.

They've been through some.

They're considering the end before they make choices.

They.

They.

They've Been through some stuff.

Yep.

Yes.

Yes.

No.

Amazing.

Well, thank you.

I've never heard of a Scottish club, but sounds like a lot of fun.

Okay, take me into New Zealand.

I want to hear about New Zealand.

I've been.

Okay.

New Zealand seem a really fun place to be.

Oh, am I right?

Yeah, it's a beautiful place.

Beautiful, beautiful.

So, yeah, how we got to New Zealand, that's a whole other podcast in and of itself.

So we'll do the, we'll do the Cliff Notes version of it.

But the Cliff Notes version of it is.

I decided I was.

It was time to move on.

My job wasn't giving me what I wanted anymore.

There was no opportunities for growth.

I'd come in the pursuit of gaining life experience.

And there I was like I was.

There was no more, really.

So where do I move?

Where do I start over?

Where do I start again?

And I just was thinking further and further and next thing I know, New Zealand comes across my radar and I go, I'm moving to New Zealand.

One way ticket.

Wow.

So, yeah, got rid of a bunch of my belongings.

Off I went on a one way, one way ticket.

Had a huge detour on the way there, though.

Holy.

I'm rocking up to the airport and I'm like, yeah, I'm here to check in for my flight.

My grandma had upgraded me to business class.

And I'm, I'm pumped.

And I get there and he's like, oh, where are you going?

I said, I'm going to New Zealand.

He says, where in New Zealand?

I said, I'm going to Auckland.

He goes, no, you're not.

Excuse me, sir.

What?

He goes, there is a cyclone that just hit and it's flooded the airport.

So we've sent all our staff home.

You can still get on your connecting flight to Fiji, but then we can't help you.

I was brand new to the world of traveling.

That is the worst thing that could have ever possibly happened to me.

To be stranded in a country that I knew nothing about.

Sure.

Now I'd be like, oh, my God, I got a business class to Fiji.

Let's.

We'll figure it out.

Sounds like a great time.

But at the time, it was the worst thing that could have happened.

So we had like quite the detour.

I ended up spending five days in Hawaii.

On my way.

I called it the divine detour.

No kidding.

So, yeah, got to New Zealand.

Finally, once my head hit that hostile pillow, I went, yeah.

I had a working holiday visa.

I had a one year working holiday visa.

And it was Just, it was so grand.

So I spent the first month, I guess the first two weeks kind of just going with the flow, meeting people, going on little trips.

Yeah.

And then I met some.

Some young girls.

Some young German girls.

Dutch girls?

No, they were German.

I met some young German girls that were selling their car.

And New Zealand, if you didn't know, is really big for their camper van lifestyle.

Camper vans are huge.

Even the locals.

The locals have camper vans and go use them.

Yes.

So I bought a car, it had a bed in the back and so I lived out of that car for about four months.

Wow.

Yeah, two of those months I picked kiwi fruit.

So.

Fresh under the vines, eating kiwis fresh off the orchard.

The, the company that I worked for picking kiwi fruit, they had accommodation that they could provide if you had a vehicle that you could sleep in.

Yeah.

And it was essentially just a frame of a house on a kiwi orchard.

Yep.

And then they put in a kitchen and they brought in some porta potties and some showers and stuff.

So you slept in your car, but then you kind of got the group aspect of the house and stuff.

Sure.

So, yeah, I lived out of my car for two months while picking kiwi fruit and I met all these people from all around the world and had a great time picking kiwi fruit.

But naturally, funnily enough, change happened and the company was experimenting, they were experimenting with these new bags, doing all these different changes.

We were the guinea pigs and we could definitely feel that we were the guinea pigs.

Yeah.

And just it was also one of the worst seasons for Kiwis in like the last 30 years.

So we're promised to get all these bin rates and all these bonuses, but the kiwi fruit quantity and quality wasn't quite there.

So it was just very interesting season.

But, yeah, picked kiwi fruit for two months.

And then a group of six of us, we became friends over the time and we then did a two week road trip down the east coast of the north island together.

So it's kind of fun.

There's four vehicles all convoying down the highway going to the same place.

Is it big?

Like, is New Zealand?

Is it a large place?

Like, obviously we're from Canada.

It takes like literal days, probably take you a week to drive across Canada.

How long does it take you to drive across, like the coast of New Zealand?

Oh, not very long.

It's been a while since I've looked at the numbers, so you might want to double check this one.

But I want to say the Length of New Zealand is the length of Alberta.

No way.

Okay, okay.

Like, it's not very long.

Okay.

Yeah.

Like, we're both from.

From Alberta.

It takes probably like four hours to drive across it for the most.

Five.

Maybe horizontally.

But vertically, if you were to go from south to north.

Oh, that would be long.

That would be long.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think north to south, it's about that.

But there was one day.

Fast forwarding a little bit.

I lived in Christchurch and I did a road trip down the west coast.

So Christchurch is in the South Island.

It's on the east side of the South Island.

Yeah.

And I was doing a west coast road trip, and I have one of my friends, one of my local friends gave me this idea to watch the sunrise on the east and the sunset on the west same day.

Okay.

And I did.

And it was so easy to do because it only took maybe four hours to drive from the east coast to the west coast.

Okay.

Okay.

Wow.

That's wild.

Yeah.

I think at one point, too, you're only ever in New Zealand.

You are only 200 km from the ocean at any given time.

Cool.

Cool.

Yeah, we're like probably 1600 kilometers from the closest ocean where we're at currently.

Yes.

Very landlocked here.

Yes, very much so.

Amazing.

Okay, well, now I want to lead us into.

I want to lead us into Canton Sea.

Okay.

How did you go from a life overseas?

Because I know it wasn't just New Zealand.

You also spent some time in Southeast Asia.

But how did you.

How did you go from, like, a life over there to starting your own business?

I would love to understand that.

Okay.

So it kind of started off where I'd had this idea for a number of years.

Right.

And I'd.

I have in my journals about saying, like, oh, I should start this business.

Start this business.

And it never came to fruition.

And so it kind of started.

I was in New Zealand and a dear, dear friend that I had made, I was telling him about the story about this business that I had envisioned back in 2017, and he turns to me and he goes, you could start that now.

And I went, what?

No, no, I have to gain life experience first.

What do you mean I haven't gained enough life experience?

He's like, no, you're.

You're ready.

And I went, oh, okay.

So that kind of planted the seed of it starting to form.

The other element of it is that I fell in love with travel.

I absolutely fell in love with travel.

But what I witnessed everyone else do was the Short term cycle of working holiday visa, save money, temporary job.

Working holiday visa to save money, temporary job.

And I went, I want to do it a little bit more long.

Long term, sustainable.

Yeah.

So you know what would be a really good way to do that?

Let's go home, let's start a business, and then the business will allow us to travel long term.

Yeah.

Super rational, right?

Yeah.

Well, that, that, that logic made sense to me once too.

Yeah.

So that's kind of the two, ultimately the two elements that came together.

A friend was like, you could do this now.

And I went, oh, yeah, I. Yeah, I can do this now.

And then.

Just the reason for it, right.

Because everyone kind of needs a reason, especially entrepreneurs.

Like, there's a reason long term why you're doing it.

100.

And I went, I want to travel long term.

I want to bring this beauty of humanity into things that I do.

I want to experience more of the world.

I want to share it with more of the world.

And how can I do that?

And it took a long time for me to figure out how to even explain.

Canton C. That itself was a whole journey that I was not expecting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think too, a lot of business owners really struggle to explain what they do.

They know what they do, but being able to explain it can be hard.

And here's the other thing, too.

Understanding how that affects your clients is something you have to see for yourself.

I don't think.

Like, I think the idea of how you think you help people is very different than how you actually help people.

And you need some time.

You need some time for that to show itself.

And I'll just use Catalyst Club as a great example.

When I started Catalyst Club, the original idea for it was I wanted to just create a community to hang out with, you know, the people who listen to the show, the people who coach with me, things like that.

What I didn't realize I was building, I had to see later.

And I.

And basically, I think I went to about four Coffee with Rockstars and I was like, holy crap, this is a business.

This is like, this is a leadership support community.

It didn't clue into me what was being built.

It took me a while to see what was happening inside.

And so I actually revamped the entire explanation for Catalyst Club on our website, because the original idea of what it was wasn't what it became, as weird as that is.

Right.

And so I guess what I'm suggesting is it can be very hard for business owners to explain what they do, especially in the Beginning, because it's almost like it becomes.

It reveals itself.

And that was one of the hardest parts about Canton C Is because it started off as a concept, and it's still a concept.

She's her own.

Being Canton, see, is her own thing that it just took me a while to discover what she was and to try and find the words to explain what she is.

Took a long time because I'm trying to figure out.

I'm trying to explain her to people and then see how people respond to figure out, like, you're saying, how to modify what form she actually takes.

So when I started, this is how I pitched to people.

Hi, I'm Carly with Canton C Consulting.

I don't.

I don't really know how to explain what we do.

We're like strategic management, but human resources, but both.

But neither, you know.

Oh, and this thing.

We have this thing about water, like, because water is like people, and it all takes different forms and path of least resistance.

Oh.

It also pulls a cycle, you know, and people are like, carly, what are you talking about?

And I go, I. I know, but I don't know how to explain it just yet.

Yeah.

So then the pieces.

The pieces started clicking.

The more that I was talking to people and the more that I was hearing kind of what they were taking away from what I was saying, like, oh, okay, it's organizational change.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

That's what we're about.

Well, and it's so funny, too, because honestly, as like, silly as this might sound, I wasn't even aware that there were, like, organizational change companies out there until I started this show.

And then I met with, like, quite a few different people who were like, yeah, like, it's kind of a big deal.

Like, it's kind of a buzzword for the moment.

But, like, not just a buzzword.

It really is required.

And we're trying to help companies adapt to this rapidly changing world.

And, yes, we need experts in this.

And I was like, holy cow.

Like, okay.

But I hadn't put two and two together.

But, you know, even in our conversation earlier, if you consider the AI and everything that's going to change over the next two years, let alone the next 10.

Absolutely.

Like, change management is going to become a necessary, critical piece of any organization.

And so people like you are just going to become worth your weight in gold, if you aren't already.

And it's interesting because when we started talking and you started explaining to me what you did and kind of explained that it's not step one, it's not Step two, not step three.

It's actually step zero.

I'm like, okay, Carly, you gotta come on and explain this thing to me.

So.

So take me into, you know, your methodology, your process for change management.

Yeah, I.

We kind of were alluding to it at the beginning of the episode how we think that it's one shiny, distracting thing on the top, but it actually comes down to these core root issues.

But we don't know what those core root issues until we can take a step back.

When we are overwhelmed in change and we are in a world of exponential change.

So we have stronger blinders on than we've ever had before.

We operate in tunnel vision of survival mode, whatever's right in front of us.

And when we're making decisions, especially about what kind of changes to make, we go, oh, this thing that's in front of me, that's what I need to fix.

Perfect.

But then guess what happens in six months?

It can returns, but with a different flavor.

Yeah.

Because we haven't addressed the root issue.

So a lot of companies, when they're in their survival mode and trying to figure out what change to make, they're going to keep wasting money, they're going to keep wasting mental resources, literal resources, until they can get to the root of the change.

So if implementing change is step one, Canton C is step zero.

Because I want you to take a step back.

We're going to look at the big picture and figure out what's the actual root of what's going on here.

Because in your world, it's looking like 20,000 different flavors.

Flavors of ice cream, sure.

Yeah.

And you might have forgotten that the root of it is milk, for example.

Or like, maybe you forgot.

Maybe instead of complaining about all these poor flavors of ice cream, you forgot to add sugar.

Who knows, right?

So let's take a step back.

Let's figure out where things are going.

The example that I use is let's say that the change you think you need to make is to increase your marketing budget.

But you're like, we've done it before and it hasn't really worked.

I'm like, okay, that's probably because there's no point increasing your marketing budget until you work on increasing customer retention.

If you don't increase customer retention, it doesn't matter how much money you throw into marketing.

Step zero is to take a step back to realize that the actual step one is customer retention.

How do we work on that first?

And then it'll, like we're saying top down, like that's a Top down approach.

Right.

We increase the marketing budget, and then everything else will fall into place underneath.

Sure.

No, no, no.

We come to the root of things, figure out what the core is, and work our way up.

So the question that I've had the whole time, and I'm happy that I get to ask you it today, how did you come to this realization?

What was the moment where you're like, I don't think we need to do we need to take a step forward here?

I think we need to take a step back.

Talk to me about, like, how you came to that realization, because it seems very profound.

Thank you.

I have been grappling in my head if it is actually a profound concept or not, because to me it's just normal.

And I say that this idea roots back to 2017 and it.

It's actually the core of this business idea.

Cause I didn't know what it was going to look like.

But what I saw was, I saw patterns.

And I saw.

It started off one of my summer jobs.

I worked at my local landfill.

And the truck driver is sitting in the truck and he's complaining about how management is making all these changes to his truck routes.

And he's like, he's complaining about how they're making all these changes, but he's the one that experiences the boots on the ground.

He's the one that knows those back alleys inside and out.

And they're just telling what to do based on what they see on a computer.

Yes.

And I'm like, wait a minute, hold on.

I've also seen this before.

My stepdad's an electrician, and I have a memory of him sitting at the dinner table one day and his company had brought in consultants to do a bunch of budget cuts.

Well, what do consultants coming in from the outside doing budget cuts do they look from the top down.

But my dad is on the inside.

And I remember him saying, if they would have asked me, I would have told them to cut the budget here and to never cut the budget there.

But you know what?

They didn't ask me.

Not my problem.

And I went, I am witnessing this through and through.

And then there's also the TV show that came out in the late 2000s, early 2010s, Undercover Boss.

Yeah.

With the power of coming from the inside and getting from the ground up.

There's a saying that if you want to find where waste is in an organization, go talk to the janitor.

No one talks to the janitor in the way that things are done right now.

They're like, no, the janitor's the last one.

He cleans up the mess afterwards.

Or hear me out.

Or we talk to him first.

That's kind of where it ultimately came from.

Okay.

Yeah, because I. I would say that.

And you know, I mean, you're a leader.

We know a lot of leaders.

They're making the best decisions they can.

But what you're saying is, is they're making them with incomplete information.

Would that be okay?

Yeah.

So what is the solution?

Like, when you're working with an organization and you're coming in and you're doing this analysis, where do you start?

I usually start with getting the team on the same page in terms of language, because it doesn't matter what we talk about.

If we're not understanding each other, we're not going to go anywhere because more often than not, we're probably all saying the same thing, but we're just using different words and it's what's causing the tension.

So maybe resistance and change is just.

We're not understanding one another.

So we have three phases for all of our services, regardless of what it is.

And it always starts off with foundation.

And the foundation is we get on the same page.

So typically it's.

I take them through my Step zero framework and I teach them be like, here's the language that I use.

I want to hear how you use the language.

And then we'll use that going forward so that we make sure that we're understanding one another.

And once we know that we're speaking the same language and seeing the same things and talking about the same things, then we'll actually be able to address what's going on.

If we're not even speaking the same language, we're never gonna figure out what's going on and where the overlaps are.

Yeah.

And then when you're trying to identify the steps required to make the change that is desired, how do you decide?

Is there a flow?

Is there just like a natural pattern that if you follow it, you can make change successful 99% of the time?

Or is it.

Is it very complex and each time you have to take different actions or different steps in order to accomplish it?

Is there a framework for change that just works?

I have a framework that I like to use.

We're still working on refining it at the time of recording to be able to say exactly the effects of it, because it takes a lot of research and a lot of input to be able to confidently say the outputs of it.

But sure, yeah, the framework that I have It's.

It parallels a lot to other people's frameworks, but it does it in a way that helps put language to different stages of business and to figure out where certain resistances are coming from.

At the very least, it's a framework to help us see the big picture because we're often stuck in that tunnel vision.

And this is a framework that lets us see it from.

It lets us see it from the big picture, from the outside looking in.

And when we look at things from a different perspective, we can go, oh, that's where it came from.

Yeah.

And then that's kind of a place to actually at least start the conversation rather than what's right in front of you.

It gives us the ability to figure out where it might have.

Where it might have sourced from, or how many cycles back do we have to go figure out where it comes from.

Sure, sure.

When you're working with clients, where do you see the most struggle?

When it comes down to implementing changes in their organization, where are you seeing the most roadblocks in the process?

Is it with them simply deciding on what to do, or is it in enacting that change in their organization, say, getting buy in from employees?

Or maybe, like you said, not doing enough research up front to even know where the challenge is or if this change is going to make any difference at.

The reason I'm asking this is that I've worked at a lot of different companies and I feel like the hardest thing in an organization, especially an established one, is to implement any kind of change because people are so resistant to it.

Even if you have buy in from leadership, because you talk to everybody, they say, well, if you want change, especially safety culture, things like that, you got to get buy in from leadership.

But my argument would be you can have buy in from leadership and still have insane resistance from the employee groups themselves.

And I think it might even be for reasons like you said, where the truck driver's like, I know my route.

I drive it every single day.

We're not going the long way just because you say we should.

You can run into that.

I've talked with a lot of people who truly believe the only way to get massive systemic change in an organization is to replace the people.

No, no, no, no.

And that's why I got you.

You can explain to me your thoughts on that.

Yeah, even.

Okay, we'll take one step a little bit further back.

Picture us as employees.

Sure.

More often than not, reasons that employees leave is not because the job changed, it's because management changed.

Sure, yeah.

People love the job.

They're like, I love what I did.

I just didn't like management.

I didn't like the leadership.

And oftentimes, maybe when leadership comes in, it's.

They've got their own pressures.

No bashing to them.

They are in a high spot of pressure.

They've been brought in, let's say, from the outside because of these promises that they were told that they can deliver.

They've got maybe a bonus on the line.

They've got a reputation on the line.

Maybe if they've got some sort of probation on the line that.

That no one else knows about.

So they're operating under pressures, but then that trickles down.

Yeah.

Into a lack of communication amongst the team.

And the team just feels like they're being steamrolled because it feels like they're just being treated like a number, not as humans.

Weird.

What happens when we finally bring humans back into the equation.

Yes.

Yes.

So it's.

It's fascinating because people don't leave because of the job itself.

The job itself changes all the time.

People are adaptable to the task, but people, they have a harder time adapting to other people.

But mainly only when there's communication not happening.

When there's a break in communication or communication becomes unpredictable or they start feeling unappreciated, and that's the form of communication.

Or communication is where a lot of things start to go sideways.

Which is why it's one of the core pillars of candency.

It's actually the middle pillar, is because communication is so key.

And it's often the reason that a lot of resistance happens.

How many times have you had a conversation with someone, not even in the business world, and you're having this heated conversation and then all of a sudden a light bulb moment goes off and you go, are we saying the same thing?

We are passionately fighting against each other on the exact same thing, but it's.

Spirited and you're just.

You're using slightly different language, but by the time you started fighting, you got those walls up and you're no longer listening to the other person.

Interesting.

So you're just fighting and you got a lot of resistance because you're not.

You're so defensive in those moments.

And that happens in businesses and in organizations when it comes to changes.

One person says, do this, and the other person's like, I'm not so sure about this.

What about this?

What about this other thing?

And then there just starts to be all this miscommunication and assumptions and steamrolling and it becomes a people problem.

But not even to the HR point.

Like, it goes deeper than hr.

Okay, okay.

I actually agree with you.

I think communication, nine times out of 10, is the challenge in almost everything.

Because if you are able to communicate your ideas well in a way, like you said, that everyone's speaking the same language so that it's understood most of the time, you can get to a conclusion that works for all parties.

But I think like you said, if you're speaking different languages, it doesn't really matter what you're saying because they're not receiving the message.

So what is your solution when it comes down to, I think if we can leave people with a good takeaway today on communication, that would be massively valuable.

When teams are looking to implement organizational change with their employees, with their managers, what is the best way to communicate what is happening?

This is gonna feel.

It feels like a cop out.

Answer what I'm about to say, but bring them into the conversation.

But not the, here's what we're doing part of the conversation.

Bring them into the brainstorming part of the conversation.

People, when they're part of solving a problem, have so much more buy in and empathy and support on it than if you say, here's what we're doing, do it.

So sometimes, but then people have trip.

People have troubles with that because it feels vulnerable.

Right.

We're, we're saying that for generations it was.

Leaders are supposed to know it all.

The higher up the organization you go, the stronger you're supposed to be, the more you're supposed to know and the less you question me.

So to bring people into it, when it's in the messy middle, as they say, yeah, that can be terrifying.

That can be extremely vulnerable.

But you can do it in a strategic way.

You don't have to show them all of the dirt.

You don't have to show them everything.

You could just take the small little piece if you're experimenting and go, okay, what do you think about this?

We're trying this.

We're still in the decision making phase.

What do you think?

So sometimes just bringing people behind the doors and bringing them part of the conversation, asking for their expertise, showing appreciation.

Oh my God.

What can happen when you show someone appreciation?

Who would have thought crazy?

So it could be like, hey, person that's been in this job role for the last 10 years, I'd like your expertise on this.

And they go, oh, wow, no one's ever asked me my opinion before.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree, I agree.

How do you scale that on a large scale, I think that the benefit that most companies have that are smaller is just that you're small enough that communication is pretty easy.

You know, let's say that you're the president of a 50 person company.

Well, most people likely work relatively close proximity to you.

You can actually get to know people in a 50 person company.

I think where I've seen a lot of challenges when it comes down to organizational change, not work, is when you start to scale that to a large scale company.

Let's talk 500, a thousand employees, maybe you have branches all the way across North America.

Right.

I think that's where it becomes really, really, really hard to enact change in a meaningful way, like you said, because let's get real, the president of the company probably isn't flying out to Minnesota from Los Angeles or whatever in order to have that, that change management conversation.

They're just saying, we've talked with our teams, we've talked with our boards, they want this, we're implementing it.

And then of course the people working at lower level, let's call it Walmart, let's use Walmart as an example.

The people working the floor at Walmart, they're going to feel like, oh, you know, upper management's just making all these decisions.

Right.

But is it possible at that scale?

I wish I could tell you.

Yeah, yeah, haven't quite figured that one out yet.

It's a question I've had for a long time because I've worked at a lot of organizations, some small and some big.

And the funny thing is is that I find that some of the larger organizations, the management of them is actually very challenging because trying to scale that out in your immediate vicinity works well.

But trying to scale that out across, let's call it 100 or 200 managers across an organization gets much harder.

So if you ever get, if you ever get an answer to that, let me know, I'm gonna have you back and you can give it.

Because I do think that change management and you know, in the scale that most of us are talking, most businesses are under a hundred employees, under 200 employees, you can absolutely enact these things.

But I do wonder once you get to large scale, thousands of employees across vast distances, my gosh, it, it's not an easy battle, I think, well, they.

Take on their own lives at that point.

They probably, they become their own entities.

And yeah, I could even see, I don't want to say it would be easier to enact change across a big company, but it depends how it's done.

Depends what kind of change.

Because the smaller the company, the more personal investment people have with everyone involved.

Yeah.

The bigger the company.

You're like, I knew what I was signing up for, that I am just a little cog in the machine.

That is a good point.

That is a good point.

Right.

It's like, you know, the, a floor working person at like Walmart has a different set of expectation than somebody working the sales floor of a 50 person company.

Yeah, yeah.

I would make that agreement.

If you're, if you sign up for Walmart, you know that you do whatever the hell Walmart tells you to do.

Sure, sure.

But if you sign up for a little.

A restaurant that might still have 50 staff members, you know, the owner.

So then if the owner makes a change, it feels more personal.

Oh my gosh.

More likely to put your cards in.

My loyalty to that owner is so much higher too.

I would say it's more fragile.

Interesting.

Because if that owner does something to frustrate you, you're gone.

If Walmart does something to frustrate you, you're like, that wasn't against me.

So like, it is what it is.

But if that owner.

We are such social creatures that it can turn on a dime.

That loyalty to someone.

If we feel as though we've been wronged, wronged, oh my God.

It takes a fraction of a second to turn our opinion on them versus Walmart.

Eh, What's Walmart gonna do?

They don't care about me.

I also don't care about them.

So it's all good.

But this owner, I thought I cared about them and I don't feel cared about by them.

So it can be easy to turn.

That's why when people leave jobs, it's often because management changed, is because there's a little bit more of that emotional.

Yeah, yeah, but that's.

We're human.

Right.

Like, to deny the emotional side is to deny humanity.

Yep.

And I think that is, I think that is the major change maybe of our generation, we can call it the post Covid years.

I think that business owners and businesses in general, large and small, are having to start to accept that, hey, we've been humans the whole time and we need to treat people as such.

Right.

I think for all the bad that happened during COVID there were some really great things that came of it.

And I think, I think bringing humanity back into business is probably the, the greatest takeaway that's, that's come from it.

Have I ever shared with you the vision statement that I have for Canton C. No.

No.

Shoot.

Okay.

My vision for Canton C is to shift humanity into a new era where we deepen the way we connect so individuals can thrive and villages can rise.

Oh, I love that.

How fitting.

That is so fitting for our time, Carly.

I love it.

I love it.

Amazing.

Well, I think this is a great opportunity as well to talk about some of the work that you do with Canton C, as well as some of your incredible speeches.

You've been out there doing keynotes.

You literally hosted your own event not a month ago.

Congratulations.

I heard it was a massive hit.

Thank you.

Please let our listeners know we have a North American audience.

Not just North American, technically worldwide, but I imagine for now, probably North America is your space.

Please let us know how you can help companies and maybe what some of the topics of the keynotes you've been doing are.

Okay.

I'll start with the topics of the keynotes and then I'll follow your momentum on follow up questions after that.

Okay.

So I don't want to get too ahead of myself.

Sure.

At the moment, I have two main topics.

So the one is my main topic.

My main keynote that I promote first and foremost is about my Step Zero framework.

So the title of it sometimes changes.

Right now I'm calling it Mapping Step Zero, Converting Tunnel Vision into a Framework for Navigating Change.

And we take this keynote and we create a foundation first, as I always do with all of my service.

We create a foundation of being on the same page.

We talk about the power of communication.

We talk about the limitation of language and how it often creates barriers with communication.

We talk about how we try to.

We're trying to get to the root of things, but we're distracted by all these fancy things on the surface.

And a way that we can kind of help bypass this limitation of language is using the Step Zero framework, which we essentially use.

It's very.

It's ridiculously simple.

It's beautifully simple, but it's so vast and it's so applicable to so many areas.

We use the metaphor of the water cycle to paint a big picture because there are so many elements of the water cycle that parallel to different phases of business.

Yeah.

But yet the water cycle, we know conceptually, without language what the water cycle looks like.

We can talk to people about the water cycle and use different words and we know kind of what's going on.

So if I tell you, like, hey, Kelly, I'm in the brainstorming phase, I feel like there was a lightning strike moment.

It's a little bit clouded at the moment, I don't know where everything's coming from.

It's starting to get a little bit dark.

Yeah.

I just.

I don't really know, but there's a lot of pressure right now.

It feels like there's a lot of pressure.

The rain needs to come out soon, and it's just getting really heated, really angry.

It's really grumbly.

I didn't use a single business term, but you know exactly what I'm referring to when I say that I'm in the brainstorming phase.

Yeah.

Of my business.

All I did was talk about storm clouds.

Yep.

And so we go through the framework where we have multiple different stages that we parallel to the water cycle as a way to kind of look at the big picture, bypass the limitation of language by using a metaphor and a concept we already know, which then gets us to ask new questions, gets to see things differently.

It allows us to talk to our peers in ways that we've never been able to communicate before and discover that, like, oh, we're actually talking about the same thing, but we're using different words.

Yeah, yeah.

Where I can ask you questions about things.

So one of the stages, it's a waterfall.

And so the waterfall is a transition point from essentially behind the scenes to in front of the scenes.

Well, guess what?

Waterfalls take on different sizes.

Are we talking a big waterfall?

A small waterfall?

Is there one layer?

Are there multiple layers?

Is it safe?

Is it dangerous?

Just like with the launching of a business, is it one massive step?

Are there lots of little steps along the way?

If it's one step, are we talking a massive Niagara Falls, One leap, Or are we just talking a little jump off a diving board?

But if we're not communicating, if I'm saying, hey, Kelly, I'm really nervous for this launch coming up.

I think we should go back.

That's kind of business terms.

Ish.

And you don't quite know what I'm saying.

But if I say, hey, Kelly, I feel like Niagara Falls is coming up, you're now like, oh, you think that this is going to be big, scary and potentially deadly.

Don't worry, I've done it before.

It's just a little.

It's a little diving board, we'll be okay.

We can now communicate a little bit differently because we're communicating what we're feeling.

Like you said, we're emotional creatures.

Yeah.

There's also that emotion that's conveyed within it.

Yeah, actually, yeah.

Like when you.

When you use that.

When you use that terminology, when you're talking about the waterfall, it resonates so much stronger with me.

Then we have a launch coming up and I'm worried about it.

It's like when you can, when you can put the scale of that launch, it's not just any launch.

We're talking Niagara Falls here.

And it could go really badly.

It's like, oh, okay, we should treat this seriously.

It's not just the launch and the.

Moment that you know it's Niagara Falls.

Guess what you need with Niagara Falls?

You need a safety crew at the bottom.

Do we have a safety crew at the bottom?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And even I was going through this framework with, with a lady a couple months ago and she's talking about how when she was an employee and she was implementing this new marketing strategy, she thought it was a one step process.

She thought it was like a one email blast, off it goes.

But then there's all sorts of resistance because turns out it wasn't just a one little diving board waterfall.

It was a multiple steps, multiple approvals.

It turned into not Niagara Fall size, but a multiple tiered big waterfall.

She thought it was just a little jump.

Yeah.

But if you don't have the language to communicate that you start to get resistance.

So we talk about in the step zero framework in this keynote about ways of communicating differently and using different language and seeing things from the big picture.

If you've been, if you've been stuck in a cycle loop of insanity in the past, when it comes to change, this is a way for you to get the big picture.

Ask new questions, see things differently, communicate with your peers in a way that you've never communicated before.

When I did my keynote last month for that event, one of the questions that the lady asked was, she was talking about being in the river and how sometimes it feels like people are wanting to turn the boat around.

She's like, but people are trying to turn the boat around and it seems like they're trying to sabotage everything.

What's going on?

I'm like, okay, well let's use the metaphor.

Are they trying to, why are they trying to turn the boat around?

Are they scared?

Do they see something that you don't see?

Maybe actually the best course of action is to go over to the riverbank and walk down the waterfall instead of riding off it in a boat.

Maybe they're not trying to sabotage it.

Maybe they just see something safety wise that you don't see and they're trying to protect the group.

She goes, oh, I've never thought about it like that before.

Right.

Because we haven't had language to be able to express the deeper context before.

Yeah.

So I could go on that forever and ever and ever.

But that's one of the topics.

Yeah.

Basically, it's how do we expand our vocabulary?

And believe it or not, that's not the first time I've had that conversation.

We have a very limited vocabulary as humans, for the most part.

And it's not that.

It's not that we couldn't use different words.

It's that nobody's taught us how to out.

And so what you're doing is you're teaching people how to explain what's going on and saying, hey, you don't just need this very limited dictionary over here.

You can use this one, and this one has metaphors.

And you're going to be able to make people feel what is happening.

Because when you say we are doing an organizational change, this is what's going to happen.

There's no feeling to it.

When you say we have a big change coming up, it feels like we're going over Niagara Falls.

I'm scared.

I can feel that different.

I can feel that now you have more empathy.

Yes.

And now, guess what, we deepen the way we connect.

We're shifting humanity into a new era.

That's huge and so fitting for the moment of time we are living in.

Carly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have big mistakes.

You may not know this, but I think you're onto something.

Oh, yeah, we could talk about that.

That's a whole other thing.

But, yeah, so we got this whole metaphor for the water cycle, and we could.

Honestly.

That's one of the beautiful parts about it, too, is we could go on and on about it because it's just a big story.

We were talking earlier about how important stories are, but then even as the world becomes more intermingled, English isn't everyone's first language, nor should it be.

I'm a big advocate that, like, why are we going default English?

I digress.

But how frustrating is it when people don't grow up speaking English and there's all these English business terms thrown at them and they don't know how to communicate.

But if you can communicate with, like, it feels like a waterfall, or can I draw it out for you in the waterfall?

We can now, again, deepen the way we connect because we're not holding on to these words.

Yeah.

But anyways, I'm gonna stop myself, actually, for real this time.

The second topic that I have is it is one of the stages of the Step Zero framework.

And we just.

The Step Zero framework is the big picture visioning is the big picture perspective.

And the second keynote, we dive really, really deep into one of the stages of the Step 0 framework, which is feedback.

Because feedback is something that, from the context of the water cycle metaphor, spoiler alert, if you will, although you can find it on the Internet.

So it's not really that spoiler alert.

Feedback in the water cycle is evaporation.

But guess what?

Evaporation doesn't just happen at the end of a water cycle.

Evaporation happens everywhere.

Evaporation happens in the clouds itself.

It happens from rain, happens in the river.

It happens at every single step.

But the way that we look at feedback right now is it happens at the end.

Well, by the time it happens at the end, you've missed all the cues.

Yeah, yeah.

You asked the wrong questions at the wrong time.

You didn't collect the information that you were supposed to because you didn't know or you didn't design it properly.

So the second keynote that we go into is feedback.

What are the different elements of feedback that we can take into consideration when we either design questions, when we're receiving information, or when we're designing our information systems throughout this change cycle, where can we pull information?

How can we capitalize on feedback as information of being more prepared, more educated throughout the process, rather than being surprised and terrified at the end of the cycle?

Like, oh, my God, that was such a horrible change cycle.

Yeah, well, yeah, because you only collected feedback at the end.

But if we collect it throughout, what can it look like?

Yeah, yeah.

And would the outcome be the same and the argument might be vastly different.

Yeah.

So we kind of, with the feedback one, we go into six different elements of feedback, six different lessons of feedback, and they're different areas that I challenge people to gain different perspectives on.

So when it comes to feedback, what's the.

The six elements are the direction of feedback, the timing of feedback, the voice of the feedback, the interpretation of the feedback, repercussions of the feedback, and feedback of the feedback.

How can we take all of these different elements into consideration when designing or extracting information from a change cycle?

Amazing.

Amazing.

And Carly, with Canton C, explain what it is, what the service is, and then obviously what the best way is for people to get a hold of you for it.

We have a couple of different services.

It depends on what level of intensity people are prepared for or what size their teams are at, what size, the changes we do, speaking as we've been talking about.

So it's like I Simply come up on a stage and I shift perspectives and I kind of challenge you to kind of look at things a different way.

There's always going to be a handout because I'm a firm believer that I want you to leave with tangible things.

We can also do a workshop on those topics where it's like we take those keynotes and we actually apply them into your specific organization of how can we as a team?

That's a really good opportunity for team building and bringing the team into those discussions as we were talking about earlier.

We also do, I suppose we can call it coaching, where if a leader is just needing that strategic mirror to bounce things off of and go, am I seeing the big picture?

Am I seeing things right?

Like, am I getting distracted?

And I can go, you are getting distracted.

Stay on course.

This is where you're going.

Or hey, can I question you of why you think this is a good idea?

So I can kind of service that strategic mirror as in a coaching capacity.

And then the bread and butter is the consulting one, which I call immersive mapping.

And it's kind of like what we were talking about with Undercover Boss, where I go and I immerse myself into your organization as this kind of fly on the wall and I get to observe the environment and the interactions and things from the outside to go, okay, this is what people are saying, but this is what they're doing.

And this is what you want, but this is what you're doing.

And how can we, okay, this is what your neighbors are doing.

And we kind of get that more all encompassing approach of what's going on to figure out where the route is, what directions to go, where things are starting to be disconnected.

So those are kind of the four services, speaking workshops, coaching and consulting.

Uh, there's a couple different ways people can get a hold of me.

At the moment I'm on Instagram, I'm on LinkedIn, my website.

I have a YouTube channel.

Maybe by the time this is released, it'll be more vibrant.

It exists, but it's not currently vibrant.

Perfect.

Amazing.

Okay, all of those things are going to be linked into the show notes on all the show posts.

So they will be able to find you.

You will be able to find Carly Grove and cantonsea.

Carly, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much for coming on.

I had such a great conversation with you.

My pleasure.

I love all.

I have a tendency, I don't know if you've noticed, when people have conversations with me, we go way off to left field.

For a very long time and it is one of my favorite things to do.

So thank you for going out to left field with me.

Left field is where the magic happens.

They don't tell you that though.

Everyone wants to go to right field, but left field's the underdog.

That's right.

That's right.

I guess I will see you soon in Catalyst Club.

And for the rest of you all, until next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.com.

See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.